write a short essay on why software development is important

• What is Software Development

Agile Software Development

• Software Developer
• SDE Roadmap
• SDE Interview Guide
• SDE Companies
• Types of Software Development
• Learn Product Management
• Software Engineering Tutorial
• Software Testing Tutorial
• Project Management Tutorial
• Agile Methodology
• Selenium Basics
• Software Development | Introduction, SDLC, Roadmap, Courses

What is Software Development?

• Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• Software Development Models - SDLC Models
• Top Software Development Topics to prepare for Interview
• Software Developer (SDE) Interview/Placement Preparation Guide

Software Development Evolution & Trends

• Evolution of Software Development | History, Phases and Future Trends

10 Reasons Why Software Development is Important ?

• Top 12 Software Development Languages [2024]
• Latest Software Development Technology/Trends to look out for [2024]
• Most Popular Software Development Companies in India 2023-2024

Software Development Life Cycle

• Software Development Process
• Software paradigm and Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• Top 5 SDLC(Software Development Life Cycle ) Methodologies
• Bug Life Cycle in Software Development
• Software Development Process Step by Step Guide | Requirement, Plan, Design, Develop & Deploy
• Role of Verification and Validation (V&V) in SDLC
• Software Quality - Software Engineering
• Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)

Software Development Models & Methodologies

• What is SDLC(Software Development Life Cycle) and its phases
• 5 Most Commonly used Software Development Methodologies
• Top 8 Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Models used in Industry
• Waterfall Model - Software Engineering
• Spiral Model - Software Engineering
• Advantages and Disadvantages of using Spiral Model
• SDLC V-Model - Software Engineering
• Prototyping Model - Software Engineering
• Rapid application development model (RAD) - Software Engineering
• Agile Software Development - Software Engineering
• Waterfall vs Agile Development | Software Development Life Cycle Models
• Agile Software Development Methodology | Framework, Principles, and Benefits
• Agile Development Models - Software Engineering
• Agile Methodology Advantages and Disadvantages
• Agile SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)
• User Stories in Agile Software Development
• Crystal methods in Agile Development/Framework
• Agile Software Testing
• Agile Software Process and it's Principles
• What are the 4 Agile Values?
• Scrum (software development)
• Lean Software Development (LSD)

Software Developer Jobs

• Software Developer - Salary, Skills and Future Career
• Software Development Team: Designations & Structure
• 10 Crucial Team Roles in a Software Development Team
• Senior Software Engineer Job Description
• 7 Best Software Development Trends to Follow

Comparisons in Software Development

• Difference between Software Development, Web Development and App Development
• Difference between Traditional and Agile Software Development
• Competitive Programming vs Software Development - Where Should I Invest My Time?
• Difference between Full stack developer and Software developer
• Difference between Software Developer and Software Designer
• Difference between Agile and SDLC

Software Development Advanced Topics

• A Complete Overview of Android Software Development for Beginners
• What is Software Security - Definition and Best Practice?
• Introduction to Exploratory Style of Software Development
• How to Keep Your Skills Updated As a Software Developer?
• Characteristics of Adaptive Software Development

Everyday we hear about Software Development in different aspects of the technological world. But have you ever wondered why Software Development is so popular ? It must be very important, right ? So in this post, we have broken down into basics to understand the fundamental reasons why Software Development is important.

10 Reasons Why Software Development is Important

Table of Content

• Introduction

1. Automation of Repetitive Tasks (Doing Boring Stuff for Us)

• 2. Enhanced Communication (Talking to Friends and Family)
• 3. Economic Growth (Helping Businesses Grow)
• 4. Data Management and Analysis (Dealing with Big Data)
• 5. Improved User Experience (Making Things Easy to Use)
• 6. Security and Privacy (Keeping Our Secrets Safe)
• 7. Innovation and Problem Solving (Creating New Stuff)
• 8. Accessibility and Inclusivity (Helping Everyone Get Involved)
• 9. Environmental Impact (Saving the Planet)
• 10. Global Connectivity (Connecting the World)

Introduction:

In today’s world, computer programs (the stuff that makes computers work) are super important. They help us do all kinds of cool things. Software development is everywhere in our lives, from automating complex tasks to assisting with boring ones. It helps us to do things that we couldn’t do without it, and it makes our lives easier and more efficient.

The process of developing software applications is called software development. Although it is a difficult and complicated process, it is also necessary for the modern world. Almost every sector of the economy and area of our lives, from the services we depend on to the gadgets we use utilise software.

In this article, You’ll discover the 10 major reasons why software development is important:

Computer programs can do boring stuff for us, like filling out forms or counting things. This helps us avoid making mistakes and saves time and money. It’s like having a helpful robot!

Software development enables the automation of repetitive and time-consuming tasks. This reduces human error, increases efficiency, and saves businesses both time and money. In the real world, this is evident in manufacturing processes, data entry, and even in household appliances that simplify our daily routines.

Use : Computer programs help us do repetitive and dull tasks automatically. Significance : This saves us time and prevents mistakes. Real-world Application : In a factory, machines controlled by computer programs assemble products like cars, making it faster and accurate.

2. Enhanced Communication ( Talking to Friends and Family)

Thanks to computer programs, we can chat with our friends and family, even if they’re far away. Think about video calls, texting, and social media – they’re all made possible by these programs.

From social media platforms to video conferencing tools, software development has revolutionized communication. It bridges geographical gaps and enables people to connect seamlessly. The significance of this is evident in remote work, telemedicine, and international collaboration.

Use : Computer programs allow us to talk to people through our devices, like phones and computers. Significance : We can stay in touch with loved ones, no matter how far they are. Real-world Application : Video calls on your phone or computer let you see and chat with family and friends who live in different places.

3. Economic Growth ( Helping Businesses Grow)

Computer programs help businesses make more money and create jobs. A lot of the cool tech companies you hear about, like Apple or Google, help the economy grow by creating new jobs and making cool stuff.

The software industry is a major contributor to economic growth. It creates jobs, fosters entrepreneurship, and stimulates innovation. For instance, Silicon Valley is a global hub for technology companies that have spurred economic development and prosperity.

Use : Computer programs help companies make money and create jobs. Significance : They make cool products and offer services that people want to buy, which helps the economy. Real-world Application : Big companies like Amazon use computer programs to sell products online, creating jobs and boosting the economy.

4. Data Management and Analysis ( Dealing with Big Data)

Computer programs can handle tons of information. They help scientists, businesses, and doctors analyze big data to learn new things or make better decisions.

Software development provides the means to gather, store, and analyze vast amounts of data. This has far-reaching implications, from helping businesses make informed decisions to advancing scientific research. Big data analytics, for instance, assists in healthcare, finance, and marketing.

Use : Computer programs handle a lot of information and help make sense of it. Significance : This helps scientists, businesses, and doctors learn new things and make better choices. Real-world Application : Weather forecasts use computer programs to analyze data from around the world to predict the weather.

5. Improved User Experience ( Making Things Easy to Use)

Whenever you use a phone app or a website that’s easy to understand, you’re benefiting from computer programs. They make our digital world user-friendly.

User-friendly software enhances the overall experience for customers and users. Think of your favorite apps and websites; they are the result of careful software development , which has become indispensable in various industries, including e-commerce, entertainment, and education.

Use : Computer programs make apps and websites easy to understand and use. Significance : They help us navigate technology without getting confused. Real-world Application : When you use a weather app, the computer program behind it makes it simple to check the forecast.

6. Security and Privacy ( Keeping Our Secrets Safe)

Computer programs help protect our secrets and information from bad people. They help keep our bank accounts, personal data, and online activities safe.

In an increasingly interconnected world, cybersecurity is paramount. Software development is crucial in creating secure systems that protect sensitive information and privacy. Banks, governments, and businesses rely on secure software to safeguard data from cyber threats.

Use : Computer programs protect our personal information from bad people. Significance : They keep our bank accounts, passwords, and emails safe from hackers. Real-world Application : Security software on your computer helps keep your personal data secure.

7. Innovation and Problem Solving ( Creating New Stuff)

Computer programs help create new, exciting things. Think about self-driving cars, smart homes, and virtual reality – these are all born from creative computer programs.

Innovation often starts with software development . From artificial intelligence and virtual reality to new medical technologies, software developers are at the forefront of solving complex problems and creating groundbreaking solutions that shape our future.

Use : Computer programs are used to invent new and exciting things. Significance : They bring us cool technologies like self-driving cars and virtual reality. Real-world Application : Self-driving cars use computer programs to navigate and drive themselves.

8. Accessibility and Inclusivity ( Helping Everyone Get Involved)

Computer programs make sure everyone, including people with disabilities, can use technology. They create special tools that help people with different needs.

Software development plays a significant role in making technology accessible to all, regardless of physical or cognitive abilities. Adaptive software and assistive technologies enable individuals with disabilities to lead more fulfilling lives.

Use : Computer programs make sure that technology is usable by everyone, including those with special needs. Significance : They create tools that help everyone enjoy technology. Real-world Application : Screen readers for people with visual impairments are computer programs that read out what’s on the screen.

9. Environmental Impact ( Saving the Planet)

Some computer programs help save energy and reduce pollution. They control things like smart thermostats and clean energy sources, which are good for the environment.

Software can help reduce environmental impact through energy-efficient algorithms and control systems. Smart grids, intelligent transportation systems, and green energy management are examples of software applications that contribute to sustainability.

Use : Some computer programs help save energy and protect the environment. Significance : They reduce pollution and energy waste. Real-world Application : Smart thermostats use computer programs to regulate heating and cooling in homes, saving energy and reducing bills.

10. Global Connectivity ( Connecting the World)

Computer programs make the internet work. They connect people from all over the world, helping us learn about different cultures and work together.

The internet, powered by software development, connects people and cultures worldwide. It’s the foundation of e-commerce, social networks, and global information exchange, promoting cross-cultural understanding and cooperation.

Use : Computer programs make the internet work, linking people from all over the world. Significance : They help us share information, cultures, and work together on projects. Real-world Application : Social media sites are made possible by computer programs and help people connect globally.

In conclusion, software development is not only important but essential to our modern world. It shapes how we work, communicate, and interact with technology. Its significance spans across industries, from healthcare to entertainment, and it continues to drive innovation, making our lives more efficient, secure, and interconnected. As technology continues to evolve, the importance of software development will only become more pronounced in our daily lives.

FAQ’s for Software Development Importance

Question 1 : What is the purpose of software development ?

Answer: Software Development is the process of designing, creating, testing, and maintaining different Software Applications.

Question 2 : Why software is important ?

Answer: Software not only makes your computer hardware perform important tasks, but can also help your business work more efficiently. The right software can even lead to new ways of working. 

Question 3 : Why is the study of software development important?

Answer: The software development process has now been formalized to prevent the software project from running over budget, mismanagement, and poor planning. The process of quality assurance and user testing is vital as it helps prevent future issues at lower costs. And this is only possible due to software engineering.

Question 4 : Which system software is most important and why?

Answer: The most important system software package for any computer is its  operating system . Every computer system runs under the control of an operating system. Operating systems for computers that are shared by many users are considerably more complex than operating systems for personal computers.

Please Login to comment...

Similar reads.

• Software Development
• 10 Best Slack Integrations to Enhance Your Team's Productivity
• 10 Best Zendesk Alternatives and Competitors
• 10 Best Trello Power-Ups for Maximizing Project Management
• Google Rolls Out Gemini In Android Studio For Coding Assistance
• 30 OOPs Interview Questions and Answers (2024)

Improve your Coding Skills with Practice

What kind of Experience do you want to share?

• Search for: Search Button

January 28, 2021 Insights Software Development

Importance of software development.

Why is software development so important? On the surface, the answer is relatively simple. Whether you realize it or not, software development now has a direct influence on many aspects of our daily lives.

From the smartphone apps that define modern communications over the internet-connected products enabling seamless shopping experiences to new application models like blockchain, microservices, and the IoT, software development has completely transformed entire industries.

Technology now shapes the entire customer journey. It spans shopping and service. Content is guiding consumers through the purchasing process–moving seamlessly between channels and devices.

It has also redefined the way we work: the cloud, along with improved mobile access, gives us the ability to connect and sync data across multiple systems and users. This combination has enabled remote work.

In this article, we look at the importance of software development in modern society and how the rate of technology change has influenced the way businesses operate and maintain a competitive advantage.

Why is Software Development So Important? Blame it on Customer Experience (CX)

Digital transformation–as a whole–is largely driven by rising consumer demands–from personalization to seamless, omnichannel experiences , hyper-relevant content, and innovative solutions users can’t find anywhere else.

Today, organizations–whether they call themselves a “tech company” or not–are expected to serve up innovative solutions and experiences able to compete with what billion dollar companies like Amazon and Netflix offer to their users.

For better or worse, consumer expectations are modeled after the experiences offered by big companies with ample resources; being competitive is about products and pricing, but also about getting the service level provided by these companies.

Companies (that can afford it) are responding to this challenge by scooping up developers with data science, AI/ML/NLP, and cybersecurity skills, causing a skills shortage and driving salaries well into the six-figures.

Many more are exploring strategic sourcing options. These companies are leaning on piecing together a network of internal staff, freelancers, gig workers, and outsourced teams both nearshore and offshore.

Perhaps the best way to answer the question, “why is software development so important” is that it’s essential for a company’s survival.

The current pandemic situation underlines the significant impact of software on society. When shutdowns began in March of 2020, many companies weren’t prepared for an all-digital marketplace and suffered major financial losses as a result.

Beyond the monetary impact, the rapid migration to remote work has led to an increased demand for software development services, with companies investing heavily in new digital solutions to replace traditional channels.

Ultimately, CX is the main driver for developer demand. Other trends, which we’ll get to in a moment, simply enable customer-centricity–whether that means eliminating friction at checkout, gaining a better understanding of evolving consumer needs, or bringing innovative solutions to market faster than competitors.

Much of Software Development’s Importance Stems from a Need to Manage Big Data

According to 3Pillar’s Jaime Salame, the software development landscape “has grown exponentially, expanding into markets and use cases I never could have imagined.”

He notes that it wasn’t long ago that moving everything to the cloud, staying connected via mobile apps, and gathering valuable intel via self-serve data analytics platforms wasn’t realistic for many companies.

For example, if you look at the data analytics space, companies had to hire a business intelligence team to make sense of internal and external data sets, and workers often relied on analysts, data scientists, and IT staff to build and run reports.

Later, when AI-driven data analysis emerged on the scene, it was only available at the enterprise level. Today, self-serve analytics tools are widely available. And due to the massive influx of data from social feeds, streaming services, and IoT adoption, have become a prerequisite for doing business.

Brands now rely on increasingly granular insights, sourced from a diverse range of datasets that contain both structured and unstructured data in a variety of formats.

For example, organizations analyze intent data, conversational insights, sentiment analysis, behavioral analytics, and engagement data. The data sets are used to understand the customer. Conversely, industry insights sourced from competitive intelligence tools, newsfeeds, and social conversations are used to understand market conditions.

Then you’ve got sales and revenue metrics, which, combined with cookies that track user behavior, put customers in context. AI-enabled analytics platforms extend human capabilities, informing decision-making, and allowing companies to compete in a challenging market.

Across all industries, the need for real-time insights on demand is a major factor contributing to the IT skills shortage. Organizations need help building intelligent solutions around multiple hyper specific use cases and roles.

For example, marketing, sales, finance, leadership, manufacturing, and so on, all require different information to support jobs. At the same time, those solutions must fit together within a single, connected ecosystem.

Additionally, organizations need data management solutions that protect user privacy, secure distributed systems, and maintain data accuracy and integrity throughout the entire data ecosystem.

Adaptive IT Infrastructures, AI/ML, & Automation Offer Faster Time-to-Market

The cloud has completely changed the way developers build software. It’s not only about physical machines these days but connected platforms and networks of containerized and serverless services.

Modern software developers rely on an evolving set of tools and services to help them keep up with rising demands and bring solutions to market faster.

Development teams have relied on tools like Kubernetes, Puppet, and Git to improve workflows, manage infrastructure, and app deployment for years.

However, operations teams have long been tasked with weaving together static configurations, files, and scripts, manually configuring and deploying workflows on underlying physical infrastructure.

According to Forrester’s 2020 Predictions report , many organizations are rethinking IT and moving toward adaptive solutions that allow them to respond quickly to changing priorities by writing infrastructure as code (IaaC).

This approach, known as Everything as Code (EaC), eliminates manual, repetitive tasks, and physical infrastructure, replacing them with workflows targeting specific goals and desired states. For example, pipeline as code allows teams to define and manage an entire CI/CD pipeline using a source code repository like GitHub.

3Pillar’s Octavio Islas says, “During my years as a software developer, I’ve seen software companies roll out faster and faster project implementations for clients by applying new methodologies like CI/CD .”

Beyond EaC, software companies have adopted new methodologies and tools for delivering better solutions at a much faster pace. They’re leveraging automation to increase productivity, run tests, and extend human capabilities.

With the Growing Importance of Software Development, Vendors Take on a New Role

The reason why software development is so important to modern society is best illustrated by considering how the role of software companies has evolved over time. In the past, software firms were just like any other vendor. You’d put in an order and receive a deliverable based on the specifications you provided upfront.

Now that every business is a software business, service providers have evolved into strategic partners.

Their role is to help organizations understand their customers and the competitive landscape, develop innovative solutions at speed and scale, and consistently deliver experiences to delight users across multiple channels and formats.

3 Pillar Software Engineer Paul Estrada explains it well: “In the past, software companies were more likely to get new clients based only on budget and experience with certain technology stacks. It used to be really common for companies to identify as a .NET, Java, PHP, or other tech-focused organization. We still have hyper-specialized companies, and they have their place in business. But in general, I think the biggest advantage today is having a broader set of services encompassing different technologies, businesses and processes knowledge.”

Paul says, “Today, it’s more common for software companies to mix-and-match different technologies to achieve a specific outcome.”

Ultimately, the software development industry is in the midst of an important transformation of its own, with vendors abandoning the “tech-focused” mindset of old in favor of a new approach centered on problem-solving and innovation.

The days of developers passively implementing specs are over. Given the tremendous impact of software on society, developers now play an active role in helping clients achieve strategic goals by aligning around end-user priorities.

A Business Leader’s Guide to Software Development

Download Now!

Software Development Table of Contents

• Ch. 1: Current State of Software Development
• Ch. 2: Importance of Software Development
• Ch. 3: 10 Leadership Traits for Modern Software Development Leaders
• Ch. 4: Importance of Good Governance Processes in Software Development
• Ch. 5: Insights for Recruiting and Retaining Great Software Talent
• Ch. 6: Developing a Software Training Strategy That Rocks
• Ch. 7: Best Practices for Creating a Software Culture Where Teams Can Thrive
• Ch. 8: Building and Managing High-Performance Teams
• Ch. 9: Critical Metrics for Measuring Software Development Team Performance
• Ch. 10: Strategies for Improving the Performance of Software Development Teams
• Ch. 11: Managing Distributed Software Teams in the Age of Covid-19
• Ch. 12: Preparing for the Future with Application Modernization
• Ch. 13: Creating an Agile Enterprise with Minimum Viable Architecture
• Ch. 14: 10 Components of an Effective Change Management Strategy
• Ch. 15: How to Choose the Right Cloud Platform
• Ch. 16: Key Decision Criteria for Selecting a Development Framework
• Ch. 17: Shift Left Benefits in Software Development
• Ch. 18: The Business Impact & Benefits of CI/CD
• Ch. 20: Everything You Need to Know to Create a Test Automation Strategy
• Ch. 21: Developing an Enterprise Software Strategy
• Ch. 22: Build or Buy? A Decision-Making Framework for Software Development Investments
• Ch. 23: Strategies for Getting Approval for Software Development Projects
• Ch. 24: 10 Software Development Challenges Faced by Modern Enterprises
• Ch. 25: Software Development Best Practices
• Ch. 26: The Most Common Reasons Software Projects Fail
• Ch. 27: Measuring the Success of Your Software Development Projects
• Ch. 28: The Importance of Integrating the User Experience into Software Development
• Ch. 29: The Importance of Quality Attributes in Software Architecture
• Ch. 30: Predictions About New Trends in Software Development
• Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter to Keep Up with our Latest Insights

Get your free playbook today.

Software development refers to a set of computer science activities that are dedicated to the process of creating, designing, deploying, and supporting software.

Software itself is the set of instructions or programs that tell a computer what to do. It is independent of hardware and makes computers programmable. There are three basic types:

System software to provide core functions such as operating systems, disk management, utilities, hardware management and other operational necessities.

Programming software to give programmers tools such as text editors, compilers, linkers, debuggers, and other tools to create code.

Application software (applications or apps) to help users perform tasks. Office productivity suites, data management software, media players and security programs are examples. Applications also refer to web and mobile applications like those used to shop on Amazon.com, socialize with Facebook or post pictures to Instagram. 1

A possible fourth type is embedded software . Embedded systems software is used to control machines and devices not typically considered computers — telecommunications networks, cars, industrial robots and more. These devices, and their software, can be connected as part of the Internet of Things (IoT). 2

Software development is primarily conducted by programmers, software engineers and software developers. These roles interact and overlap, and the dynamics between them vary greatly across development departments and communities.  

Programmers, or coders , write source code to program computers for specific tasks like merging databases, processing online orders, routing communications, conducting searches, or displaying text and graphics. Programmers typically interpret instructions from software developers and engineers and use programming languages like C++ or Java to carry them out.

Software engineers apply engineering principles to build software and systems to solve problems. They use modeling language and other tools to devise solutions that can often be applied to problems in a general way, as opposed to merely solving for a specific instance or client. Software engineering solutions adhere to the scientific method and must work in the real world, as with bridges or elevators. Their responsibility has grown as products have become increasingly intelligent with the addition of microprocessors, sensors, and software. Not only are more products relying on software for market differentiation, but their software development must be coordinated with the product’s mechanical and electrical development work.

Software developers have a less formal role than engineers and can be closely involved with specific project areas — including writing code. At the same time, they drive the overall software development lifecycle — including working across functional teams to transform requirements into features, manage development teams and processes, and conduct software testing and maintenance. 3

The work of software development isn’t confined to coders or development teams. Professionals such as scientists, device fabricators and hardware makers also create software code even though they are not primarily software developers. Nor is it confined to traditional information technology industries such as software or semiconductor businesses. In fact, according to the Brookings Institute (link resides outside ibm.com), those businesses “account for less than half of the companies performing software development.”

An important distinction is custom software development as opposed to commercial software development. Custom software development is the process of designing, creating, deploying, and maintaining software for a specific set of users, functions, or organizations. In contrast, commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS) is designed for a broad set of requirements, allowing it to be packaged and commercially marketed and distributed.

Read how desktop as a service (DaaS) enables enterprises to achieve the same level of performance and security as deploying the applications on premises.

Register for the guide on hybrid cloud

Developing software typically involves the following steps:

• Selecting a methodology to establish a framework in which the steps of software development are applied. It describes an overall work process or roadmap for the project. Methodologies can include Agile development, DevOps, Rapid Application Development (RAD), Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Waterfall, and others.
• Gathering requirements to understand and document what is required by users and other stakeholders.
• Choosing or building an architecture as the underlying structure within which the software will operate.
• Developing a design around solutions to the problems presented by requirements, often involving process models and storyboards.
• Building a model with a modeling tool that uses a modeling language like SysML or UML to conduct early validation, prototyping, and simulation of the design.
• Constructing code in the appropriate programming language. Involves peer and team review to eliminate problems early and produce quality software faster.
• Testing with pre-planned scenarios as part of software design and coding — and conducting performance testing to simulate load testing on the application.
• Managing configuration and defects to understand all the software artifacts (requirements, design, code, test) and build distinct versions of the software. Establish quality assurance priorities and release criteria to address and track defects.
• Deploying the software for use and responding to and resolving user problems.
• Migrating data to the new or updated software from existing applications or data sources if necessary.
• Managing and measuring the projec t to maintain quality and delivery over the application lifecycle, and to evaluate the development process with models such as the Capability Maturity Model (CMM).

The steps of the software development process fit into application lifecycle management (ALM). The IBM® Engineering Management solution is a superset of ALM that enables the management of parallel mechanical, electrical, and software development.

• Requirements analysis and specification
• Design and development
• Maintenance and support

Software development process steps can be grouped into the phases of the lifecycle, but the importance of the lifecycle is that it recycles to enable continuous improvement. For example, user issues that surface in the maintenance and support phase can become requirements at the beginning of the next cycle.

Software development is also important because it is pervasive. As IBM vice president and blogger Dibbe Edwards points out: “Software has emerged as a key differentiator in many products — from cars to washing machines to thermostats — with a growing Internet of Things connecting them.”

A few examples:

• Soul Machines (link resides outside ibm.com) uses software to create artificial online advisors that improve customer service and efficiency. The advisors have human faces, expressions and voices that react intelligently, empathetically, and efficiently to customer questions and needs. They can answer over 40 percent of customer inquiries without human intervention — and they learn from their interactions to improve over time. Using IBM Watson Assistant to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into the development process, Soul Machines can create and roll out an artificial advisor in about 8 to 12 weeks.
• “This is a race,” says Erik Bak-Mikkelsen. “We have to keep up with what’s happening in the market.” Bak-Mikkelsen is head of cloud operations at car2go (link resides outside ibm.com). He understands that delivering new features and functions to car2go’s ride-sharing apps and vehicles is key to getting and staying ahead. To do so, car2go moved its development operations to a managed-services cloud and adopted a DevOps development model. The result is accelerated development cycles, faster time to market and the capability to scale for future growth.
• Working with electrical power lines can be deadly. To stay safe engineers set electrical “lockouts” using physical tags and padlocks to divert power from work locations. French energy company Enedis (link resides outside ibm.com) worked with IBM Garage for Cloud to develop software that instruments these locks and tags and ties them into a shared network. Tags and locks detect each time that they are removed from an engineer’s van and communicate the time and geo-location. As the engineer attaches the locks, their location is recorded on a digital map. All stakeholders share a view of the map to ensure safety, reduce downtime and facilitate repairs. The IBM Cloud Garage collaborative development approach enabled Enedis to develop field-ready prototypes in three months.

Using software development to differentiate brands and gain competitive advantage requires proficiency with the techniques and technologies that can accelerate software deployment, quality and efficacy.

• Artificial intelligence (AI):  AI enables software to emulate human decision-making and learning. Neural networks, machine learning, natural language processing and cognitive capabilities present developers and businesses with the opportunity to offer products and services that disrupt marketplaces and leap ahead of the competition. IBM Watson offers developers a way to connect with and use artificial intelligence services as part of their applications through application programming interfaces or APIs . You can also use IBM Watson to improve your product requirements by checking for ambiguity, unclear actors, compound or negative requirements, missing units or tolerances, incomplete requirements, and unspecific quantities.
• Cloud-native development: Cloud-native development is a way of building applications to use cloud environments. A cloud-native application consists of discrete, reusable components that are known as microservices that are designed to integrate into any cloud environment. These microservices act as building blocks and are often packaged in containers . Because of this architecture, cloud-native applications can use cloud environments to improve application performance, flexibility, and extensibility .
• Cloud-based development: Just as IT organizations look to the cloud to improve resource management and cut costs, so do software development organizations. In this way, the cloud can be used as a fast, flexible, and cost-efficient integrated development environment (IDE) or development Platform as a Service (PaaS) . Cloud-based development environments can support coding, design, integration, testing, and other development functions. They can also offer access to APIs, microservices, DevOps and other development tools, services and expertise. 
• Blockchain:  Blockchain is a secure, digitally linked ledger that eliminates cost and vulnerability that is introduced by parties like banks, regulatory bodies and other intermediaries. It is transforming businesses by freeing capital, accelerating processes, lowering transaction costs and more.  Blockchain presents a tremendous opportunity for software development. Developers are working with distributed ledgers and open source Hyperledger (link resides outside ibm.com) technology to change how businesses operate.
• Low code:  Forrester defines low code as: “Products and/or cloud services for application development that employ visual, declarative techniques instead of programming and are available to customers at low- or no-cost in money and training ...”  4 In short, it’s a development practice that reduces the need for coding and enables noncoders or citizen developers to build or help build applications quickly and at lower cost.
• Analytics: Annual demand for data scientists, data developers, and data engineers will reach nearly 700,000 openings by 2020 . The demand signifies how critical it is for companies to gain insight and value from the explosion of data. Accordingly, software developers are integrating advanced analytics capabilities into their applications. Cloud-based services and APIs make it simpler to guide data exploration, automate predictive analytics and create dashboards that deliver new insights and improve decision making.
• Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) : In MBSE, software modeling languages are used to perform early prototyping, simulation, and analysis of software designs for early validation. Building designs in MBSE helps you to analyze and elaborate project requirements and move rapidly from design to implementation.  
• Mobile: A key capability for software developers is creating mobile apps with deep connections to data that enriches and elevates user experiences. Forrester has found that “deeply integrating digital/mobile customer data has a strong effect on how customers interact with brands.”
• Agile development breaks requirements into consumable functions and delivers rapidly on those functions through incremental development. A feedback loop helps find and fix defects as functionality continues to deploy.
• Capability Maturity Model (CMM) assesses the proficiency of software development processes. It tracks progress from ad hoc actions to defined steps to measured results and optimized processes.
• DevOps, a combination of development and operations, is an agile-based approach that brings software development and IT operations together in the design, development, deployment, and support of software.
• Rapid application development (RAD) is a nonlinear approach that condenses design and code construction into one interconnected step.
• Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) provides a way to scale agile methodology to a larger software development team or organization.
• Waterfall, often considered the traditional software development methodology, is a set of cascading linear steps from planning and requirements gathering through deployment and maintenance.

A proven solution for modeling and design activities that helps you deliver higher-quality software and systems faster.

Advanced software version control, workspace management, which is distributed source control and parallel development support for individuals and teams to improve productivity by automatically tracking changes to artifacts. The software enables a virtually unlimited suspend-and-resume feature to handle work interruptions.

Provides connections between IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management tools and 3rd party tools like Git, GitLib, and GitHub for managing version control of software.

Code, content, community and more.

Sign up for the topics that matter most.

Meet complex business needs with speed and agility by connecting you software development tools.

Our computer science research today focuses on discovering breakthroughs in automation, information processing, and computation.

IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) can help you embrace an end-to-end management approach to your systems and software development. Conquer complexity from design to execution, unite teams through digital thread, leverage modelling and reuse, harness insights from automated reporting, and confidently operate at scale.

1  Software, Techopedia (link resides outside ibm.com)

2  Embedded software, Wikipedia (link resides outside ibm.com)

3  Software Engineer vs. Software Developer – What’s the Difference? Fullstack Academy (link resides outside ibm.com)

4  The Forrester Wave™: Low-Code development Platforms for AD&D Pros, Q4 201 John R. Rymer, Forrester Research, Inc. 23 October, 2017 (link resides outside ibm.com)

What are your chances of acceptance?

Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

Your chancing factors

Extracurriculars.

College Essay Tips for Software Engineering Programs

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Hale Jaeger in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered:

“why this . . .” essays for software engineering, writing your essay.

For many college applications, you’ll write essays in addition to the Common App personal statement . These prompts will often ask you about what you’re planning on pursuing at the college. This article will give you practical advice for explaining your interest in software engineering. 

Many supplemental essay prompts are quite common, such as “ Why this major? ” and “ Why this school? ” If you’re sure about pursuing software engineering and know which college you want to kick off your career at, you should already know the answers to these questions. 

Certain schools have strong software engineering and computer science programs. If this is the case for your chosen college, it should be easy for you to say that you can identify with their program. You can add that you’re excited to use the specific resources there and how they will help you reach your goal of becoming a software engineer.

When talking about your major, bring up what attracts you to the field. Your eventual salary and career prospects are incentives, but you want to explain what specifically about the study of computer science and engineering makes you excited. Why do you like to learn about it? Maybe you’re fascinated by the inner workings of technology. Perhaps you’re interested in how specific tools on certain websites work. It’s also possible that you want to improve user experience and innovate existing software.

These reasons are a bit less shallow than money. They also get to the heart of why you want to pursue software engineering: you like to build things and solve problems. 

From Abstract to Specific

In general, when writing your essays, you should work on funneling these types of ideas about your major from the abstract to the specific. You can open with a particular anecdote or story to catch the reader’s attention, of course, but try to start with high-level interests. Fundamental things like identifying the inner workings of a website can lead to more niche topics.

Personal Experiences

When writing your essays, make sure you touch on any personal experiences that can help show why this subject is your passion. It can all add to the personal narrative that you’ve been building in your entire application and help make the admissions officers understand you better.

If you had an experience with technology that fascinated you, drew you into the subject, and made you want to learn more, then include that. Be sure to add the important details so the reader can get a good sense of the scene. Another way to go is if you had the opposite experience: you encountered a frustrating piece of technology and were desperate to figure out how to get it working. You realized that you wanted to go into the field to improve software and make people’s lives easier. You can try writing about your interests that way. 

Another way to write your essay is to back up an explanation of your passions with a personal story that will make your essay compelling. Try to draw on an anecdote, and if possible, explain what you’ve accomplished after your initial interest was sparked. 

How did you get involved in coding? If you found technology that was glitching all the time or something that excited you, did this inspire you to figure out how it all worked? Write about how you’ve developed your skills in coding and science and how much you’ve learned about good systems and malfunctioning systems. Then, write about what you want to accomplish and innovate in the field.

Plans for the Future

When you’ve discussed the past and present, you can begin to probe the future. For the sake of narrative, try to include how you’ve grown and what your ultimate ambitions are. If you’re not sure exactly what branch of software engineering you want to go into, that’s fine. You can name a few options, such as game design or mobile design, or you can just talk about how you want to build things and make better technology to improve people’s lives. 

When you’re talking about personal things, you should aim to be specific. Draw on stories when you can, and be honest about what interests you about this subject and what you want to do in the field. This is your chance to explore why you’re looking to go into software engineering, so you should come away from these essays feeling much more confident about your planned course of study.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Essay on Software Engineering

Students are often asked to write an essay on Software Engineering in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Software Engineering

Introduction to software engineering.

Software Engineering is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, development, and maintenance of software systems. It combines principles of engineering, computing, project management, and software design.

Role of a Software Engineer

Software engineers are responsible for creating software applications. They analyze user needs, design software solutions, test the software, and fix any bugs or issues that arise.

Importance of Software Engineering

Software Engineering is vital in today’s digital world. It helps in creating efficient and reliable software, ensuring that technology runs smoothly and meets user needs.

Software Engineering is a fascinating and vital field. It plays a crucial role in shaping our digital world and improving our lives.

250 Words Essay on Software Engineering

Software Engineering is a branch of computer science that involves the development and building of computer systems software and applications software. It integrates various principles and methodologies to design, develop, test, and maintain software solutions.

Principles and Methodologies

Software Engineering employs a systematic, disciplined and quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software. It encompasses methodologies like Agile, Waterfall, and Scrum, which provide a structured framework for software development.

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

At the heart of Software Engineering is the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), which comprises several phases such as requirement gathering, design, coding, testing, deployment, and maintenance. Each phase has its own significance, and skipping any phase can lead to project failure.

Significance of Software Engineering

Software Engineering is critical in today’s digital age as it contributes to efficient and reliable software production. It ensures the development of high-quality software within budget and timelines, meeting both market and customer demands.

Emerging Trends in Software Engineering

The field is continually evolving with emerging trends such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, and DevOps, which are reshaping the software industry. These advancements are pushing the boundaries of Software Engineering, making it an exciting field to explore.

In conclusion, Software Engineering is a vital discipline that combines creativity, problem-solving, and technical skills. It is at the forefront of creating innovative solutions that transform the way we live and work.

500 Words Essay on Software Engineering

Software Engineering is a discipline that integrates the principles of computer science, mathematics, and engineering to design, develop, and maintain reliable and efficient software systems. It’s a vital field in our digital era, where software systems are integral to various aspects of human life, including healthcare, transportation, entertainment, and education.

The Core of Software Engineering

At the heart of software engineering lies the software development life cycle (SDLC), a structured process that includes stages such as requirements gathering, design, coding, testing, deployment, and maintenance. The SDLC is designed to ensure the delivery of high-quality software that meets user requirements and is maintainable, efficient, and reliable.

Software engineers also use design principles and patterns to create software systems that are robust, scalable, and easy to maintain. These principles guide the structuring of software components and their interactions, leading to systems that are easier to understand, modify, and extend.

Software Engineering Methodologies

Different methodologies guide the process of software development. Traditional methodologies, such as the Waterfall model, emphasize a sequential approach where each stage of the SDLC is completed before the next begins. In contrast, Agile methodologies, like Scrum and Kanban, promote flexibility, iterative development, and continuous customer feedback.

Quality Assurance in Software Engineering

Quality assurance is a critical aspect of software engineering. It involves a set of activities, including testing and code reviews, designed to ensure that the software meets specified requirements and is free from defects. Automated testing tools, continuous integration, and continuous deployment are commonly used practices in modern software development to ensure rapid feedback and high software quality.

The Role of Ethics in Software Engineering

Ethics in software engineering is a significant yet often overlooked aspect. Software engineers have a responsibility to ensure that the software they develop is not only functional and efficient but also respects user privacy, security, and societal norms. They must consider potential misuse of the software and strive to prevent it.

Future Trends in Software Engineering

As technology evolves, so does software engineering. Trends such as Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, and DevOps are shaping the future of software development. Artificial Intelligence is being used to automate parts of the software development process, while Cloud Computing provides a scalable and cost-effective platform for deploying software applications. DevOps, a practice that emphasizes collaboration between development and operations teams, is becoming increasingly popular for its ability to deliver software faster and with fewer errors.

In conclusion, software engineering is a dynamic and evolving discipline that plays a crucial role in the digital world. It combines rigorous processes, methodologies, and principles with creativity and problem-solving skills to build software systems that power our world. As we move towards an increasingly digital future, the importance and relevance of software engineering will only continue to grow.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Civil Engineering
• Essay on Cities Are for Humans Not for Cars
• Essay on My Favourite Story Book Cinderella

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

For enquiries call:

+1-469-442-0620

• Web Development

Importance of Software Engineering: Key Reasons

Home Blog Web Development Importance of Software Engineering: Key Reasons

A software engineer studies, designs, develops, maintains, and retires Software. That’s why in almost every organization, there is a need for a software engineer. And this somehow raises the importance of software engineering today. Though it deals with different areas and serves many functions, educating the software engineer about best software practices and discipline is necessary.

In this new era of technology, software engineering's importance is not only in bigger IT companies and MNCs but also outside IT departments. We need this practice in our daily life for several reasons, as it avails certain benefits. If you are one to gain knowledge about software engineering, you are in the right place. The article will acknowledge its importance, needs, benefits, and many more.

If you want a career in software engineering, join online Software Development training courses and uplift your knowledge in advance.

What is Software Engineering?

The Software Engineering branch of engineering focuses on developing software products utilizing various scientific principles, techniques, and procedures. Software engineering leads to a product that is efficient and reliable.

Software Engineering is the combination of two words, Software, and engineering. The Software comprises integrated programs designed carefully with organized instructions and codes. And engineering refers to inventing, designing, building, maintaining, and improving devices and processes using scientific and practical knowledge.

Importance of Software Engineering

The importance of software engineering lies in the fact that a specific piece of Software is required in almost every industry, every business, and purpose. As time goes on, it becomes more important for the following reasons.

1. Reduces Complexity

Dealing with big Software is very complicated and challenging. Thus, to reduce the complications of projects, software engineering has great solutions. It simplifies complex problems and solves those issues one by one.

2. Handling Big Projects

Big projects need lots of patience, planning, and management, which you never get from any company. The company will invest its resources; therefore, it should be completed within the deadline. It is only possible if the company uses software engineering to deal with big projects without problems.

3. To Minimize Software Costs

Software engineers are paid highly as Software needs a lot of hard work and workforce development. These are developed with the help of a large number of codes. But programmers in software engineering project all things and reduce the things which are not needed. As a result of the production of Software, costs become less and more affordable for Software that does not use this method.

4. To Decrease Time

If things are not made according to the procedures, it becomes a huge loss of time. Accordingly, complex Software must run much code to get definitive running code. So, it takes lots of time if not handled properly. And if you follow the prescribed software engineering methods, it will save your precious time by decreasing it.

5. Effectiveness

Making standards decides the effectiveness of things. Therefore, a company always targets the software standard to make it more effective. And Software becomes more effective only with the help of software engineering.

6. Reliable Software

The Software will be reliable if software engineering, testing, and maintenance are given. As a software developer, you must ensure that the Software is secure and will work for the period or subscription you have agreed upon.

Why do we Need Software Engineering?

Most people don't give a second thought to new technologies as they make their life easier and more comfortable to drive. We need software engineering because software engineering is important in daily life. We have technology like Alexa only because we have software engineering. It has made things possible which are always beyond our imagination. Let's explore some points to answer why we need software engineering:

1. The rise of technology

The rise of technology has catapulted software engineering to the leading edge of the enterprise world and made it pretty critical. As technology continues to seep into each component of our lives, we can need software program improvement more, and it will become even more vital. From working manually and on an analog basis, engineers have automated every aspect of life by nurturing software development as an industry.

2. Adding structure

Without software engineering, we have people who can code. But software engineering methodology has a structure to everything and makes the lifecycle and business process easy and reliable.

3. Preventing issues

The software development process has now been formalized to prevent the software project from running over budget, mismanagement, and poor planning. The process of quality assurance and user testing is vital as it helps prevent future issues at lower costs. And this is only possible due to software engineering. For the success of projects, it becomes vitally important.

4. Huge Programming

Huge programming is possible because of software engineering as it becomes the extensive one that has steps to give them a scientific process.

5. Automation & AI

Currently, Automation and AI are hot subjects in the IT industry. Because of software development, the manufacturing industry is overhauled by automation. The quantity of humans operating on manufacturing unit flooring continues to decrease as automation software improves. As this fashion continues, maximum engineering disciplines will probably rely upon software improvement in a few ways.

6. Research

Through research and development, only new technology arises from the industry. It is possible today because software engineering is at the forefront of new technology research and development. Through each step forward, other parts of the industry can flourish as we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Enroll in a Full Stack Developer certification course and certify your software development skills.

Benefits of Software Engineer

Software engineering has structured the code world and allowed generations to increase. We ought to also understand the benefits of software program engineering:

1. Best Practices

It provided us with the best practices being the consent of software engineering. To gain experience, some practices include KISS, Testing code, Refactoring code, Version control, readability, etc. But the best practice is that which delivers simple code with effective work.

2. Maintainability  

With the maintainability of codebases, software engineering has become mature. The maintenance is all about corrections and modifications to drive smoothly.

3. Scalability

Scalability is everything in the world of web development and SaaS products. And such products are built to work under varying loads only because software engineering has made it so.

4. Accessibility and Usability

Now accessibility is more important than ever. The internet wouldn't be accessible today to many disabled people without the help of software engineers. Their work has been crucial in ensuring that the internet is open to everyone.

5. Security

Software engineering has become more significant than at any other time since individuals can get to your applications from any device and area. It implies many moving parts and developing a security strategy that is sufficiently strong to confront the test as significant. Security lapses can have devastating effects on big companies, so we need software engineers to help us safeguard our systems.

Testing has become unbelievably significant as there has been a tremendous drive in the industry for incrementing standards. And this is the reason for the further development testing. There are different kinds of tests. The most vigorous are end-to-end tests that test how an application coordinates and unit tests that assess specific functionality.

What is the Importance of Software engineering in Software Engineering?

Software engineering is important because we have software engineers who play an important role in developing Software that makes our life easy. Software engineers are important members of IT firms whether they are full-time staff, part-time, vendors, or contracted workers. With the software engineering principle, their job as software engineers is to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate the Software.

Despite their knowledge of the software development process, software engineers require input from IT leaders regarding software requirements and the result. If we analyze the importance of software engineering today is only due to the hard work and effective approaches of software engineers. Without a software engineer, software engineering is not important in software development.

Importance of Software Engineering in Computer Science

Through computer science, a software engineer can develop the industry of software engineering. It is the platform where they can learn the proper use of programming languages and architectures to develop computer games, network control systems, etc.

Importance of Software Engineering in Information Technology

Information Technology is the practical approach to software engineering using technology. A degree in IT engineering provides knowledge of managing the company's IT infrastructure and assets. The degree programs don't give you a detailed understanding of programming. Still, the importance of software engineering in Information technology arises as it helps you learn basic programming and how to use the technology in information media.

Future of Software Engineering

Software engineering is significant and actually. The principal significance of software engineering is the form that was not there previously. This is one-of-a-kind since they walk the scarce difference between innovative and logical. They should have the option to envision the item and afterward make it. There might be many more choices in the future, and those who put resources into software engineering will certainly receive the rewards.

Looking to enhance your coding skills? Dive into the world of Python with our unique and engaging python certificate course . Unleash your potential and become a Python pro! Join now.

The importance of software engineering has gained incredible growth with time. There has been a profound impact on nearly every aspect of modern society, and it continues to provide us with incredible opportunities. Businesses that make billions of dollars rely on simple web and mobile apps that provide great value to their customers. Thus, the world will need software engineers for a long time as technology takes hold of more and more aspects of our everyday lives.

With KnowledgeHut , explore your idea about the importance of software engineering. We are here for those looking for software engineering as their future career. Visit our page, where you get numerous courses that will easily lead you to your goal.

Join Knowledgehut Online Software Development training courses with us and develop your skills.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

In our daily lives, software engineering plays a crucial role. Whatever Software we use in our day-to-day life, all are the production of softwa re engineering. We use Microsoft Office, E-mail, Games, etc., whic h make our life easier.   

The main purpose of software engineering is to deal with software applications' design, development, testing, and maintenance.  

Software engineering is very important in software development because it helps your application to do a quick, efficient, and effective fixation when a breakdown occurs.

Sachin Bhatnagar

With 20+ yrs of industry experience in media, entertainment and web tech, Sachin brings expertise in hands-on training and developing forward-thinking, industry-centric curricula. 30k+ students have enrolled in his tech courses.

Avail your free 1:1 mentorship session.

Something went wrong

Upcoming Web Development Batches & Dates

How writing can advance your career as a developer

“In their first few years on the job, engineers spend roughly 30% of their workday writing, while engineers in middle management write for 50% to 70% of their day; those in senior management reportedly spend over 70% and as much as 95% of their day writing.” - Jon Leydens

I didn’t take a single English class to receive my undergraduate engineering degree. It’s a shame because writing has been arguably one of the most important skills I’ve had in my career as a software engineer and team leader.

I got my second internship in college thanks to a strong cover letter. As a new graduate, I got my first job by sending a cold email to an interesting startup I found online. When I was put in charge of an engineering team a few years later, two of my first few hires knew me through my blog before applying. And, in 2020, I left my role as a CTO to start a technical writing business because so many companies were asking me to write developer-focused content.

While my experience might be unique (very few engineers go on to become professional writers), writing is an important skill for all of us in software development. According to an IEEE article , engineers spend a large part of their day writing, and it only increases as they get more senior:

“In their first few years on the job, engineers spend roughly 30% of their workday writing, while engineers in middle management write for 50% to 70% of their day; those in senior management reportedly spend over 70% and as much as 95% of their day writing.” - Jon Leydens as cited in The Writing Engineer

The move towards remote work over the past year has also reminded many managers of how important it is for their teams to be able to write. 30% of respondents to Upwork’s Future of Work Survey cited communication issues as one of the biggest challenges in going remote.

Software engineering is a team sport

If you’re new to engineering, you might have the misconception that software development is largely done in quiet rooms full of developers independently writing code.

While writing code is part of the job, the other, often larger component is deciding what code to write and how to write it. This portion is largely collaborative as business, technical, and interpersonal interests must work in tandem to produce any significant piece of software.

“Every industry has truths that are obvious to those who have spent time working in the industry, but may be surprising to those on the outside. One such truth for software engineers: our jobs involve an awful lot of writing.” - Ben McCormick, Engineering Manager at Kustomer

Most production-ready software projects are built by large groups of people, and those people have to communicate. Whether you are creating technical documentation, giving another team member feedback on their pull request, planning a new project, or answering a question on Stack Overflow , it’s likely that you’ll spend at least a little time writing something every day as a software developer.

Writing ability might be a baseline requirement for many software development jobs, but it’s not a skill that developers typically think about improving for their careers. While it’s tempting to invest all your spare time learning new frameworks and languages, improving your writing might actually be a better way to advance your career and stand out in tech.

For this piece, I spoke to eight software developers to learn more about how writing has helped them advance their careers. I then distilled their stories into five specific benefits that writing has given them throughout their careers and added a bit of my own experience as well.

1. Writing reinforces learning

As software engineers, we have to constantly be learning new things. According to the most recent Stack Overflow developer survey , “75% of respondents noted that they learn a new technology at least every few months or once a year.”

Educators have understood the value of writing as a learning tool for years, and everyone I talked to mentioned that writing helped them reinforce new concepts too. If you write publicly, you get the dual advantage of possibly teaching other engineers some of the concepts you’ve learned.

“Writing code to solve a problem is one thing, but explaining that solution to a community of developers on the internet is another. You want to make sure you absolutely know what you're saying; which means research, lots of research!” - Daniel Phiri , Developer Relations at Strapi

Eze Sunday , a software developer and freelance writer, agreed, adding, “if you can't teach it, then you don't really know it.”

I’ve never been a note-taker, but I’ve always tried to write blog posts about new things that I’m learning. Very few of these posts got a lot of readers, but they were a great way for me to reinforce new technology or tools that I had recently learned. Adam DuVander , a developer, consultant, and author of Developer Marketing Does Not Exist , gave me similar advice:

“Look back at your most recent commits. Pick a fun technical challenge you faced and share how you fixed it. If you do this every month or two, you’ll have more technical posts than almost any other working engineer.” - Adam DuVander

2. Writing can help you find jobs and clients

Writing can help reinforce topics that you know, but it’s also a window into your skills as a software engineer .

“[Writing] is social proof of my ability to learn in public,” Dan Moore , Head of Developer Relations at FusionAuth told me. “My writing was instrumental in getting my first job in developer relations, as I met the company at a conference and was able to show them work examples.”

“I owe my entire career to a couple of articles I wrote,” Adam DuVander told me. “A tutorial I wrote on Webmonkey led to my first developer job. They saw how I discussed the technology and knew before we even chatted that I could handle the work.” He went on to add that writing helped him get a job with ProgrammableWeb among other career opportunities. “My whole career really all comes back to writing,” he said.

Stephanie Morillo , a technical program manager and author of The Developer’s Guide to Content Creation , had several examples of how writing has helped her on her career journey:

“I once got a full-time offer to join a cloud computing startup as a copywriter on the strength of a few blog posts I'd written. I wrote a few articles about tech culture in the mid-2010s and was able to secure conference speaking engagements from them. I was offered a role as a part-time technical writer for an open-source organization, and I even started doing freelance copywriting on the side for [software development] agencies.” - Stephanie Morillo

John Gramila and Keanan Koppenhaver , both software consultants in Chicago, had similar stories of getting new clients thanks to articles they’ve published about various software engineering topics. “People want to engage and want to reach out,” Keanan said, “but if you never put yourself out there with something you've written, you won't see many of those opportunities.”

3. Writing can lead to book authorship and public speaking opportunities

Back in 2017, I challenged myself to write something every day. Most of the pieces that came out of that experiment were random programming topics I was learning, but for about three months, I focused on a series of articles about using PHP with Docker.

This led to a short, self-published book , conference speaking opportunities, and lots of consulting offers over the years. I didn’t feel like I was an expert on PHP or Docker, but because very few people were writing about the topics publicly, my work stood out.

Dan Moore had a similar experience, turning a collection of his blog posts into a full-length book ( Letters to a New Developer ). James Hickey , a Senior Software Engineer and Microsoft MVP, echoed similar opportunities thanks to his writing. “I have had many people reach out to me about doing contract work simply by reading my blog and had many offers to write books in the last couple of years.”

Adam DuVander pointed out that taking on projects like writing a book or speaking at a conference is a career differentiator as well. “Instead of competing with all other engineers, you become The Choice in your area,” he told me. “Write about it and if there’s enough business interest, you’ll find a great role.”

4. Preserves your personal historical record

If you work for a company with restrictive intellectual property rules, you might not be able to share much about your day job publicly, but even writing privately can be valuable.

Stephanie Morillo told me that she recommends developers try journaling. “Journaling gives you the opportunity to write without being self-conscious because you're not writing with an audience in mind; you're doing it for yourself.”

Dan Moore added that “Writing serves as a historical record, but more importantly it clarifies your thoughts. I often write down a question or issue I'm facing and find that I see new avenues for exploration.”

Recording your logic at a point in time is also important because it’s likely to change (and hopefully improve) over time. I’ve found myself coming back to the same ideas and engineering problems repeatedly over the years.

This revisitation of the same topics is now part of my writing process , as each time I write about something, my ideas and arguments get a little stronger. In the same way that Fred Brooks warns us that “In most projects, the first system built is barely usable,” I find the first piece I write about a topic is much less compelling than later iterations.

5. Writing opens up new career opportunities

Finally, having both writing and programming skills opens you up to entirely new career options. Whether you’re experiencing burnout or simply want to look for new challenges, developers who can write have a lot of options for alternative career paths .

“The options are almost infinite, but include product, technical account management, marketing, sales engineering, and more. You can combine your authentic technical background with the ability to communicate it in a role where those skills are both much needed and rare.” - Adam DuVander

While writing may not be quite as lucrative as software development, there are plenty of hybrid roles like technical writing, developer relations, and technical training that offer very good salaries and career advancement opportunities.

I don’t expect many developers to take these alternative pathways, but it’s helpful to know these roles exist. Many people who get burned out of software development have a hard time deciding what they can do with their skills, but if you enjoy writing, there are plenty of unconventional options.

Getting started

Writing is an essential part of modern software development, and it’s only getting more critical as remote work becomes increasingly common. That said, you don’t have to start a public blog just to get started. Taking on small projects like answering Stack Overflow questions, writing Twitter threads, keeping a journal, or taking extra time on your company’s internal documentation are all good ways to get started.

If you want to start your own blog, Medium , Dev.to , and Hashnode are all popular options for developers. Or, if you’d prefer to get paid to write, there are many great technical blogs that pay contributors .

However you do it, I’d encourage you to just get started. When you do, let me know about your journey on Twitter . I’d love to follow along!

DEV Community

Posted on Aug 9, 2021 • Originally published at howtocode.io

Why Writing is Important for Software Developers

Writing is thinking out loud..

If you want to become a great software developer than you need to be a great writer. I am quite surprised to find so few people talking about how important your writing skills are within the world of software development. Being able to clearly articulate your thoughts is practically a superpower, because most people struggle to do it well.

Just think about how much writing you need to do as a software developer, that does not involve writing code. Emails, Slack, documentation, readme's, code comments, git commit messages, pull requests, code reviews, etc. I think it would be fair to say that most developers write more words than code every day, and yet I never hear of a developer talking about how they need to improve as a writer. Being able to write great code is incredibly important, please don't misunderstand me, however, being a great writer is even more so.

Great writers are great thinkers.

I mentioned earlier that writing is thinking out loud. When you are reading someone else's words, you are reading their thoughts after them. Those words are the result of their thinking. The same can be said about code. When you are doing a code review, or checking out the source code of some open source project, you are reading someone else's thoughts after them.

This is why when you read great writing you are actually reading great thinking. When you see well written, concise, simple and easy to reason about code, you are reading great thinking. The common denominator is great thinking in both cases.

So how do you become a better thinker? By becoming a better writer. How do you become a better writer? By becoming a better reader and by writing a lot.

There are no shortcuts

I am sure you have heard something along the lines of, "a great developer is a lazy developer." This is true and the sentiment often refers to the fact that great developers automate as much as possible. We possess the power to wield computers however we wish, and when we use this power to delegate much of our work, we are considered "lazy" which is an admirable trait.

The trait of being a "lazy" developer does not hold water however when it comes to being a great writer. Great writers are anything but lazy. Great writers show up, each and every day, and write -- and they write a lot! There simply are no shortcuts to becoming better at writing. The more and more you write the better you will become at it, but you have to put in the work.

There are no shortcuts.

The beautiful thing about this, is that by recognizing this you already have a leg up on the competition, if you are willing to put in the work. Most people are not willing to put in the work required to become a great writer, and this gives you a significant advantage.

Natural talent only gets you so far

I am sure many of you reading this now are thinking, "but I am not a great writer." Very few of us are born great writers, we become great writers by the act of writing... a lot!

I was quite fortunate to study at a very prestigious music school in college and was surrounded by what felt like thousands of modern day Mozart's. I was the underdog. I couldn't read music, I never had a private music lesson in my life before attending school, and here I was surrounded by kids with perfect pitch, who traveled the world playing with some of the best symphonies on the planet, had record deals, you name it. On the surface it seemed like I didn't belong, and maybe that was true, at least at first. However, what I brought to the table and what made me stand out from all of them was my work ethic.

You see, many of them were quite arrogant and relied solely upon their natural God given talent. I was not gifted with as much talent as most of them, but I worked harder than all of them. Eventually, I surpassed them, because of my hard work ethic. Developing a hard work ethic was one of the greatest lessons I learned while studying there as it has catapulted my career ever since.

The same is true for you and your writing. Not everyone is born a Hemingway, and even he had to write a lot to develop his tremendous talent.

Most people are not born great, they become great.

You simply need to write more than the competition and eventually you will surpass them. There is a limit to how far natural talent will get you, but there is not limit to how far you can get with a strong work ethic. So work hard at your writing and hone those skills on a regular basis, every day if possible.

Establish a daily writing habit

Establishing habits becomes increasingly more difficult the older you become, so start to establish a daily writing habit as early as possible. You don't have to write 5,000 words a day, you simply need to exercise your writing muscles. If you only have 10 minutes, than work with what you have. Writing for 10 minutes a day is more effective than not writing at all.

Writing to throw it all away

Often times people get stuck staring at the blank page because they cannot think about anything to write about. They think they have to write something perfect, well edited, well informed, with a sophisticated vocabulary. That may be true if you are writing for a large publication or trying to write a NY times best seller, but you are doing none of those things. You are writing emails, Slack messages, documentation, etc.

When you sit down to write every day, just write, knowing that you can simply throw it all away. What is most important is showing up and practicing your writing each and every day. If you really have no ideas, write about how you have no ideas, and how you are feeling about that. Write about what you would like to accomplish that day, or what you are grateful for, etc. Just write!

Practice in Public

Finally, the last thing I would like to mention is the importance of practicing your writing in public. If you don't have a blog, start one. If you don't want to write a blog, post on Twitter or your social media platform of choice on a regular basis. Here is the thing, if you are just starting out, no one is going to read what you write anyways, so what are you so concerned about? Just start writing.

Over time your writing will improve and you will start to gain some attention and begin to build a small audience. As your audience grows, so will your writing skills. The both grow naturally and organically together, so stop worrying and just start writing and publishing as often as possible.

Writing is incredibly important as a software developer and will serve you well for the rest of your career and your life. Establish a daily writing habit starting today. The benefits will far exceed anything you can imagine.

Top comments (5)

Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use.

• Location Chennai, India
• Work Senior Software Engineer at EPAM Systems
• Joined Nov 11, 2019

Very good article. I agree with you on this. I had the same realization when I was reading "On Writing Well" by Willian Zinsser. Writing has so much in common with programming. Today my programming skills are good, because I practiced it daily, similarly writing can only be honed by practicing it daily.

Also sometimes, when I sit down to write about a topic, I have some knowledge about it. As I write about it, my thoughts gets more and more clear and when I complete the writing, I get a clear picture of the flaws in my initial knowledge.

I advice the same to requirement gatherings as well. When you write down the requirements, you get a lot of question which you wouldn't get in just discussing over meetings.

• Email [email protected]
• Location Hatboro, PA
• Education Berklee College of Music
• Work DX Engineer @ Cypress.io
• Joined Jan 5, 2021

I haven't read that book, but I am going to add it to my list. Thanks. Writing also helps clarify my thinking and helps to expose gaps in my understanding.

It was suggested by DHH from Basecamp in his book.

• Location San Jose, California
• Education Computer Engineering B.A.Sc, University of British Columbia
• Work Principal Engineer, Open Source, Netlify
• Joined Jun 25, 2019

Great advice. I've found this to be my experience. Everything that has happened to me in the past 2 and a half years started from the decision to write. I had been working on a pet project, a JavaScript framework for years. It was performant, it was even topping most benchmarks, but I wasn't doing much with it.

Then one day I decided to write about the process of creating it. And then I wrote more about other frameworks that influenced it. Next thing I knew I was teaching core concepts, doing comparison articles, and opinion pieces on new technology trends. I'd worked in tech for 14 years but it was articles that I had written that attracted attention. I was offered a job working on an open source JS framework core team of a large silicon valley company. They found me from my articles.

Through promoting articles on Twitter I got to interface with many of the greatest thinkers in my industry. I started getting invites to go on live streams and podcasts, and now those have extended to conference talks. Today that framework I wrote hit 10k stars on github.

Now obviously I have put together something special. But it wouldn't have done anything if I hadn't started writing. I don't write every day but a bit a few times a week. Sometimes articles take weeks to come out but I've managed to keep a cadence of 2-3 articles a month. It's the best decision I made and I recommend it to anyone.

• Joined Feb 17, 2020

Important text. Write before code, always. Especially when working solitary.

Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink .

Hide child comments as well

For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse

New hydration errors mismatch messages

Artur Slomowski - Apr 12

C# da kasr sonlar

Javohir - Apr 12

Path To A Clean(er) React Architecture - A Shared API Client

Johannes Kettmann - Apr 12

Preventing Arithmetic Overflows and Underflows in Solidity: Best Practices and Strategies

auditfirst_io - Apr 12

We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.

The Importance of Software Development to Society & Examples

A software created based on certain requirements of customers, to meet the needs of main users properly and in accordance with the trend of the business and technology market at the time of launch. Over the years, software outsourcing has gradually become a familiar concept with a wide range of well-known application products spread across our life fields such as healthcare, banking, finance, e-commerce, logistics and so many more. Not only that, but the forms of conducting software outsourcing have also become diversified, from ‘onshore’, to ‘nearshore’, or even ‘ offshore ’, all of them. are contributing to a convenient and colorful technology world.

There are many examples of software development in general and offshore software development outsourcing in particular, from a simple weather reporting and forecasting application, to a health monitoring & warning application, or an application related to cash flow or market volatility...

How Important Software Development is in Our Lives?

Playing a prerequisite role in shaping human everyday life, technology advancement is slowly reaching the perfection stage to become a great "assistant '' to the human owners themselves. However, it is also somewhat of a decisive role in devastating human affairs, as Marc Andreesen said, “ Software is eating the world ” since it outperforms normal tasks within the correct applied code. To elaborate on this statement, in addition, the Software can be operated 24/7, never late, never ‘needs to take a day off for relaxing’, operated without mistakes, not distracted from work and has marginal costs, the level of risk of human resources is almost zero.

And it's incredibly clear, who we are now reading books on our Kindle devices, ordering a dating party through an app - or even ordering food and food home, buying travel tickets. through the application, and are shopping for cosmetic clothes with the application. In the midst of the Coronavirus epidemic today, people also take advantage of distance education through meeting platforms and screen sharing in a group, or book appointments with doctors - buy medicines through apps. More and more large businesses and industries are operated directly on the software and delivered to customers/users as online services - from film to agriculture to defense.

There are so many concerns in this world and we must be fed up with manual manipulations to do it ourselves every day. Instead, we live on applications, and - perhaps overstated - we depend on software applications quite a lot.

5 Typical Examples of Software Development

Then, it shouldn't be too surprising that apps play such an important role in life. Software development also developed and flourished. Each application program is designed to assist the user with a specific process and interface/image - in other words, the application program enables the user to create content and perform tasks. However, the most popular are still application software written for offices and businesses. Here are 5 typical examples of software development that can be applied in business and in life:

Created in 1983, Microsoft Word is a word processing software that can be installed on a computer, tablet or mobile phone that supports it. More than just a plain text editor, its features let you set margins, create tabs, and insert page breaks for your document; on the other hand, nowadays, users can even compile invitations, resumes ... based on the available templates that MS Word offers.

Firefox is a web browser designed to protect your information - automatically enabling pop-up blocking and built-in browser features. Thanks to its high level of security, businesses can use it in any project. When using this type of browser, you can set privacy and security measures to keep your documents and transmission safe.

Introduced in 1989, AutoCAD allows you to use your computer to create and edit various designs for use with those containing the graphics controller inside. Operating systems such as Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android are the ones capable of running this application.

Customer relationship management

Customers still play a very important role in operating and ensuring the prosperity of a business. How will we trade and exchange goods if there are no customers interested in and accessing the product? While it sounds general, in essence, this is the type of application software that will be designed based on the nature and size of your own business - to capture, review, store, analyze data related to customers, and also to manage customer interactions and facilitate the sales process and related partnerships.

Collecting data is inherently not easy, as the marketing team and sales staff have to approach customers with all kinds of clever tricks. Therefore, you will waste a 'treasure' of data in your hands if you don't know how to use it. Therefore, this application is built to create an electronic data warehouse to quickly and coherently access, review and update specific pieces of information.

Wrapping-ups

In addition, we have many more examples of software development and illustrate the importance of modern technology to life. Depending on the size and purpose of the business, the target audience, and the specific approach… software development can be conducted to create useful products and services for business, customer-oriented / internal staff, or simplify file processing ... Everything you need, wrapped in one app!

Thanh (Bruce) Pham CEO of Saigon Technology

Table of Contents

Want to start a project?

Our team is ready to implement your ideas. Contact us now to discuss your roadmap!

You may also like

Proof Of Concept In Software Development: 5 Critical Factors To Success

The Differences Between AI and ML

FinTech Development Outsourcing: Market Overview and Trends

As a Leading Vietnam Software Development Outsourcing Company, we dedicate to your success by following our philosophy:

YOUR SUCCESS IS OUR MISSION.

Software Development: Integrated Perspective Essay

Risk analysis in software development, software development outsourcing.

Risk analysis is one of the most important parts of software development. On the one hand, it is a business-level tool that serves as a possibility to ensure that all the decisions are supported by evidence. On the other hand, they provide the developers with critical information regarding the vulnerabilities of the developed software and may protect the team from being exposed to numerous threats (Merkow & Raghavan, 2010). There are several advantages and disadvantages that can be associated with risk-analysis methodologies. Within the framework of modern software design, developers have to deal with quite a few limitations, so it is critical to analyze risks before getting to the development process. In other words, the ability to take into consideration typical risk definitions may be one of the core characteristics of high-quality software and efficient software risk assessment. In order to perform eminent risk assessment, the developers have to identify, rank, and mitigate all the risks that they find throughout the way. Overall, risk analysis is a complex process that has to be completed step by step so as to go in line with the development lifecycle.

The two categories of evidence that the results of risk analysis have to dwell on include initial requirements and testing. Due to the multifaceted nature of risk analysis, it cannot be performed solely by the design team (Highsmith, 2013). It is a specialized subject that requires the understanding of business influence, legal proceedings, and the business model that has to be integrated into the software. This kind of approach allows the team to make assumptions when necessary and prevent the escalation of risks. During the next step, security specialists go through the list of assumptions completed by the team and compile a revised version of the list that consists of the most critical instances of threats. Nonetheless, modern software design hardly aligns with the traditional views of risk analysis. This is why the predictions are expected to provide statistically relevant results that can serve as a platform for the future risk mitigation (Davis, 2013). It is safe to say that software design should be one of the key aspects facilitating the process of risk analysis. Knowing that not a single software application is safe when it comes to vulnerabilities, one should perceive risk assessment as a tool that impacts the reputation of developers. All of the potential threats can be identified by means of decomposing the application and dividing it into a series of major components. The significance of risk analysis cannot be underestimated because it influences software development even at the architectural level.

It is a rather common situation when highly technical development environments are subject to outsourcing. Nonetheless, this kind of approach tends to intensify the issues. Even if not taking into consideration the issues with management, the problem of communication becomes a key challenge for the majority of project managers that have to deal with outsourcing. One of the ways to mitigate the issues of software development outsourcing is to align the development practice with a testing framework (Clarke & O’Connor, 2012). Regardless of the size of the project, the outsourcing party can comply with the initial schedule and instructions by means of referring to the original testing framework from time to time. When a company needs to outsource, developing such framework should become an essential component of the project. On a bigger scale, such approach is going to validate the original design and all the milestones created by the developers. There may be other problems transpiring throughout the process of outsourcing because the core two reasons for the latter are saving money and time.

This may negatively affect the development of software design and outshine the significance of working code. The concept of software development lifecycle (SDLC) can accommodate outsourcing only in the case where a number of crucial points are taken into consideration. For instance, the developers may be interested in implementing certain security activities that would safeguard the application on the way from requirements to the final release. According to Paul (2011), the choice of SDLC models should be conducted throughout the requirements phase so as to perform a number of decomposition activities. From the point of view of security and resiliency needs, the concepts that have to be addressed first include data classification, subject-object modeling, and threat modeling. This kind of support of the SDLC facilitates the process of completing security activities.

It also hints at the fact that the development phase has to include recurrent code inspections because, without software assurance controls, proper software development outsourcing is impossible (Volter, Stahl, Bettin, Haase, & Helsen, 2013). Throughout the testing phase of SDLC, the team has to evaluate the efficiency of the existing software assurance controls and perform regression testing. Another important issue that has to be addressed by outsourcing software developers is the concept of user acceptance. It has to be one of the most important factors in terms of both functionality and security. SDLC has to be supported by numerous deployment activities in order to ensure that the essential components of the software development process are secured. All the developed software items have to undergo post-deployment certification to become valid and vulnerability-proof. In this particular case, all the associated data shall be either archived or disposed of in order to protect the developed software.

Clarke, P., & O’Connor, R. V. (2012). The situational factors that affect the software development process: Towards a comprehensive reference framework. Information and Software Technology , 54 (5), 433-447.

Davis, A. (2013). Just enough requirements management: Where software development meets marketing . Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Highsmith, J. (2013). Adaptive software development: A collaborative approach to managing complex systems . Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Merkow, M. S., & Raghavan, L. (2010). Secure and resilient software development. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Paul, M. (2011). Software security in a flat world. ICS2. Web.

Volter, M., Stahl, T., Bettin, J., Haase, A., & Helsen, S. (2013). Model-driven software development: Technology, engineering, management . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, February 8). Software Development: Integrated Perspective. https://ivypanda.com/essays/software-development-integrated-perspective/

"Software Development: Integrated Perspective." IvyPanda , 8 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/software-development-integrated-perspective/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'Software Development: Integrated Perspective'. 8 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "Software Development: Integrated Perspective." February 8, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/software-development-integrated-perspective/.

1. IvyPanda . "Software Development: Integrated Perspective." February 8, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/software-development-integrated-perspective/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Software Development: Integrated Perspective." February 8, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/software-development-integrated-perspective/.

• System Analysis, SDLC and Project Management
• Implementing Management Software System Using SDLC
• The Inclusion of Nurses in the Systems Development Life Cycle
• Including Nurses in SDLC
• Veterans Health Administration System Development Lifecycle
• Researching of Waterfall Model
• The Software Development Lifecycle: Attacks and Vulnerabilities
• Secure Software Development Life Cycle
• The Importance of Managing the Project Lifecycle to Achieve Successful Project Outputs
• Lean Six Sigma and Software Development Process
• Software Development Life Cycle
• Software Testing Profession
• Software Testing Tools: ZAP, Testing Anywhere, and ThreadFix
• Commercial Off-the-Shelf Software
• Concept of the Network Virtualization

• Essay-Driven Software Development /

Essay-Driven Software Development

"Writing is formalized thinking."

Today I am going to share a wild idea that actually worked wonders for my own software development efforts. I have been playing with writing essays for my dev work for several months now and I will argue that essays can become a valuable new tool in your toolkit and help you become a better developer as well as a sharper person.

Following this practice you can:

• Reduce wasted effort writing software features
• Resume work faster
• Better communicate pros/cons with your colleagues
• Have traceability of major technical decisions
• Formalize the process for feature proposals
• Increase the likelihood of your feature being implemented
• Have a central repository of know-how and domain knowledge
• Reduce back and forth discussions while implementing features

But before we jump into the details, let’s cover the basics.

How Writing Is Important #

Many successful people would argue that being able to write gives you an enormous edge, especially now when this skill is severely underestimated. Jordan Peterson, Jocko Willing, Tim Ferris, are only a few people who have shared multiple times how being able to write properly can open many doors in your life. According to them, writing allows you to:

• Have clarity of thought
• Communicate more clearly
• More easily find flaws in your ideas/thinking
• Better defend your ideas

It should be obvious that those can have far reaching effects on multiple aspects of your life but I will leave it to you to dive deeper if you are so inclined. You can get started here , here , here , and here .

Now let’s focus on how essays can help you become a better software engineer, CTO, startup founder, you name it.

Essay-Driven Software Development #

The process as a whole is simple and boils down to creating an essay for every feature/idea and trying your best to explain why that particular thing should be built and how.

For my projects, I have a folder called journal where I keep all essays in a Markdown format.

Putting your thoughts into written form will allow you to better assess your ideas and spot any potential problems. Simply the act of writing down your ideas will allow you to tinker with them more easily - rearrange, combine, delete, reformulate. That will significantly increase your bandwidth to formulate a solution or make a decision.

Another benefit is the ability to resume work much faster. We know that context switching is killing us and that Deep Work can help us do more and better work but no matter what we do we will be interrupted and we will need to stop our work. The longer the pause, the worse the impact. I have found that simply reading through my essay will dump all of the needed information in my brain and allow me to continue straight from where I left. Previously I would need a lot more warm-up time to get going.

Since we are dealing with software, you are free to put code into your essay. If applicable, I usually lay out several possible implementations using code or pseudo code and compare and contrast the different options. This has proven immensely helpful in stopping me from going the wrong path.

Once you finish the essay, you will probably have a much better understanding if the feature is even worth doing and what’s the best way to go about implementing it. What you do next is analyze what you have written or share your essay with colleagues for further discussion (if needed). If you must defend your idea, having written the essay should make your case stronger.

If you decide to proceed to implementation, you will continue working on your essay. You will create a new section at the end of your essay where you will write any important decisions or questions that are bound to pop up during the implementation. Software is usually far too complex to expect that everything will go as planned and no issues will occur even if you are using essays. Once a noteworthy question is identified, immediately write it down - again with context and what must be decided. Write down the resolution after the question has been answered. This step is most valuable for historic tracking of decisions and has proven amazingly helpful when you are not sure why something was done in a certain way. This is a very good way of storing knowledge.

Once you are done and the feature is implemented, I tend to write a summary about what was done and how the whole process went.

The Template #

Every essay has a slightly different structure simply because you are dealing with different topics. Nonetheless, I tend to have the following components most of the time:

• Background - what you are talking about and what the context is
• Analysis - how and why your idea is going to work / be implemented
• Experiment & Metrics - the way you are going to measure success of this feature
• Implementation - implementation details
• Summary - highlights of what was done and why

I have decided not to embed a sample software development essay here as the reading experience is not optimal. I did not like the idea of having an article within and article and going full Inception . If you have been intrigued by Essay-Driven Software Development, I have created a companion Github repo where you can take a look at a sample eassay to help you dive deep on the matter. Also, there is a blank template to get you started.

Tips & Tricks #

Here are some guiding principles and advise that I can give after following this practice for about 6 months:

• Just try it, be messy - you should not be perfect. Just start writing and see if the practice adds value to your work.
• Use it for trivial stuff - there are cases where the implementation and the impact seem so obvious but I would encourage you to write an essay even for the more trivial stuff. You will find out that sometimes trivial stuff is not so trivial and that it needs more exploration.
• Essays can be short - Some topics are easy. Some essays are short.
• Code while doing it - yes, you can code while creating your essay. It is kind of the research part of your essay. I regularly go back to the code to check and try things.
• Add code to your essay - I have already mentioned that but it is worth repeating - add code to your essay (you are a software developer after all). That way you will be able to more easily compare various implementations and have it all in one place.

Final Thoughts #

I hope that this kind of approach to writing software can help you become a better at exploring and defending your ideas. Let me know if you have tried something similar or if you are willing to experiment with this approach.

In the end I would suggest to just try it. Ping me in the comment section if you have any questions.

References #

• Jordan Peterson on the Power of Writing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfDOoADCfkg
• Adventurous? You NEED to Learn How to Write - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4f3aHlTe0E
• How to Use Writing to Sharpen Your Thinking - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65U5byDZ55M
• Improving Your Writing Will Improve Your Thinking - https://www.grammarly.com/blog/improving-your-writing-will-improve-your-thinking/

Why Every Software Engineer Should Write Articles

by Stanislav Kozlovski

And How It Benefits Everybody

In today’s highly complex and rapidly evolving computer science industry, it is more important than ever to have people writing technical pieces that explain complex technologies and concepts in a simple way.

You’ve already seen it. The tech space is riddled with a plethora of fields and buzz words: Blockchain, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science, Distributed Systems, Quantum Computing, Big Data, AR, VR, Microservices, NoSQL, Progressive Web Apps, OLAP, A/B Testing, WebAssembly, Kubernetes, Hadoop, Ansible, DynamoDB, Terraform, Vagrant, GRPC, Thrift, JWS, Ethereum, Cassandra, etcd, Kerberos, CentOS, DC/OS, Prometheus, Kafka, OAuth, OpenStack, Avro, containerd, zstd, Oodle and countless more…

Depending on how knowledgeable you are, you might have heard about all of the aforementioned. Even if you have, the question is how well do you know all of them? Would you be comfortable explaining to a complete novice what all of these are at a high level and be sure that you aren’t skewing any information?

Unless you are really, really on top of your game, I bet the answer is no .

The Problem

Today’s technology is growing in complexity and variance day by day at lightspeed. It is becoming increasingly harder to keep up with everything new that is happening.

On a personal level, I am quite frankly struggling to keep up with everything new that’s happening while trying to be exceptional in work and balancing my personal life. And I’m not even that busy. I know for a fact that there are people out there trying to balance 10 times more things than I am. I have no idea how they keep up, if they do at all.

The Solution

The space needs more good writers who are able to digest a certain piece of information and present it in a succinct way for fast and easy comprehension.

For example, I once tried to learn what Kubernetes was. Naturally, I opened up their documentation and starting reading through it (what better source than the official one?). After a couple of pages going through each concept, I found that I hadn’t understood absolutely anything. Maybe it was my fault, but after talking to other fellow engineers, I’ve found they also found it challenging.

Then I found this article . I read it in under 10 minutes and revisited the documentation afterwards. Everything was clear now.

As you hopefully saw, that Kubernetes article was at a very high level, but managed to provide you with a great overview through clear explanations and great analogies. If there were such world-class introductory articles for every technology out there, everybody could get up-to-speed in a matter of one day, instead of re-reading and struggling to digest the same documentation over and over.

This would be very beneficial for the industry, as it would help expose the largest number of people to the newest tech, therefore allowing the field as a whole to advance faster.

To achieve this, though, we need people to put the effort into creating such content. Let’s go over why it’s worth it for everybody involved.

What You, The Writer, Win

At first glance, you might think that you only lose the time that is dedicated to creating proper readable content. This is not true in the very least. Writing articles has multiple amazing benefits to your growth as a person.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough — Unknown

I know this quote is very cliché, but you realize how true it is after you try to explain a topic you’re not too knowledgeable on. I’ve personally experienced this — an article I imagined would take at most a day to finish, took me close to a month. Once I started to actually write it, I started to uncover how many things I was unsure of. Not long after, I found myself with more than 20 open tabs full of resources I had to read.

Since you want your article to be of the highest quality, it is very important to verify and be certain that everything you’re saying is correct — your name is on the line! This makes you think very hard about every single statement you place in your article, and requires you to know the concept you’re writing about inside-out.

In the end, I’ve found that writing an article on something helps me firmly solidify the concept in my head and understand it thoroughly. This is my strongest motivation for continuing to write. Nowadays, the only way I’m sure I know something is after I’ve written an article on it.

Fulfillment

Contributing and being appreciated is something we all inherently enjoy.

Knowing you have helped people even in the slightest way brings fulfillment to your life. Having people write positive comments on your articles always bring positive feelings.

Better Communication

Good communication is essential. In your personal life, you will very frequently need to justify your thoughts and opinions. At work, you will very frequently need to explain concepts or approaches to other (probably non-technical) people.

These things are regularly done through writing. One of the top companies in the world — Amazon — makes their employees write narratives instead of presentations .

Therefore, it is very important that you are able to convey your thoughts through writing in a masterful way. Practicing is the only way to improve.

Opportunities

Hopefully the content you’re writing will be actively read by people. This opens you up to a lot of opportunities like meeting new people, having speaking engagements, and even being offered jobs.

I’ve had immense success through writing. My Kafka Article helped me significantly propel my career by landing a job at an amazing company called Confluent . They found my article and thought I might be a good addition to the team, thus they interviewed me. Everything worked out and now I’ve found myself part of a better, more challenging, and interesting organization in a new country.

Apart from career advancements, the articles I’ve written have helped me connect with other very smart people across the globe. For example, I was recently contacted by an engineer who found me through my distributed systems article . After a quick chat, we decided it would be cool to meet up while we were both staying in the San Francisco Bay Area (thanks for showing me around, Quan!).

What Others Win From Your Content

Even though I’ve portrayed it as a somewhat selfish endeavor, writing in its most basic sense is altruistic. It is the process of sharing knowledge. Through writing good, succinct pieces, you are helping further the education of other people.

In this digitalized world, it is now easier than ever to reach a wide audience and provide massive value. You are contributing to and outright helping push the industry forward by getting more people up to speed with the latest advancements.

An alternate view

Different people come from different backgrounds. Because of that, some content might click perfectly with one type of audience but completely go over the head of another.

I’ve personally stumbled upon many resources where, after I’ve comprehended them, I recognize that I could have portrayed the same thing in a much more simple (to me) way. This isn’t because the writer did a bad job — it is purely because of my different perspective on the concept.

As such, it is extremely important to have many different resources on the same concept, all of which present it in their own way. This increases exposure and maximizes the amount of people that can grasp the concept.

Good quality technical articles are needed for a healthy software industry. As I showed, there is much incentive for you to put in the effort and produce quality technical content. It is inherently very beneficial to the reader and even the industry as a whole. Please do trust me when I say that writing opens up a lot of opportunities to you as an individual, and is worth every minute invested into it.

Final Call to Action

If you want to take a step in the right direction — start writing an article on something you feel knowledgeable about right now! Chances are there is something that’s been on your mind these past days. Of course, the best approach is to not force it, but sometimes you have to force through writer’s block and just produce some sort of a draft which will eventually be perfected (send it to your friends for review).

Even if it is something simple in your eyes, there is certainly somebody out there that was as clueless as you were before you learned it — help them by presenting the concept from an alternate viewpoint.

I currently work at Confluent . Confluent is a big data company founded by the creators of Apache Kafka themselves! I am immensely grateful for the opportunity they have given me — I currently work on Kafka itself, which is beyond awesome! We at Confluent help shape the whole open-source Kafka ecosystem, including a new managed Kafka-as-a-service cloud offering.

We are hiring for a lot of positions (especially SRE/Software Engineers) in Europe and the USA! If you are interested in working on Kafka itself, looking for new opportunities or just plain curious — make sure to message me on Twitter and I will share all the great perks that come from working in a bay area company.

If this article was helpful, share it .

Learn to code for free. freeCodeCamp's open source curriculum has helped more than 40,000 people get jobs as developers. Get started